


Between Your Star and Mine

by agirlfromniima



Category: Reylo - Fandom, Star Wars
Genre: Angst, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 01:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10674807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agirlfromniima/pseuds/agirlfromniima
Summary: Life is far from perfect, far from many hopes, and usually far from how we perceive it. When a young girl named Rey on the harsh desert planet Jakku, and a young Jedi named Benjamin, uncannily cross paths through a mysterious star in their skies, their lives will take turns they never have before, and intersect right into each other.





	Between Your Star and Mine

_A gloved hand rose to take in the sweep of light and energy arrayed before them. “Look at it, Lieutenant. So much beauty among so much turmoil. In a way, we are but an infinitely smaller reflection of the same conflict. ...”_

— _The Force Awakens_ novelisation, first edition.

**. . .**

Those who say the eternal sandboxes that are deserts do not grow cold have never trekked through Jakku’s rising sand dunes in the heart of the night. They have never felt the sandy winds crash onto their backs with a sweeping chill against the afternoon’s perspiration, or the billions of cold granules filling their boots with each sinking step that prickled their soles until they were an ungainly shade of bruised blue. 

One particularly unfortunate little girl had, though, all too well.

With all of the strength the toughest scavenger had leftover from a hard day’s sweat, the small one stomped through the sea of sand underneath the all-encompassing night sky. Her hands gripped tightly onto the thin straps that kept the large and barely contained pile of junk on her back, secured only with a worn out sheet of cloth and her will to eat and live.

A new flare of stinging wind greeted her bare arms and seeped through the thin bandages of cloth wrapped all around her torso and the raw silk blouse she wore. 

“Cold...cold...cold!” her teeth chattered.

She had to stop soon, she knew, or else she’d freeze in her tracks. An image of herself as a statue- legs positioned as if they were to take another wide step, face stilled with eternal emotions of disparity and hopelessness, and eventually of the sand that would shift over and bury the corpse that would never scavenge another rusted shield generator or complain about the cruel Mother Sun again- took form in the child’s mind. 

And so she stopped her voyage to nowhere. Her eyes squinted to try and find _something,_ somewhere, that would show her mercy, and that would give her a new excuse to keep existing in this desolate system.

As if an answer to her unverbalized fantasies, she did find something: a light. It was far off, lining the very edges of the horizon, but it was there—that was all that mattered. She adjusted her huge load and persisted. 

The brightness was growing closer and closer. As it did, she could make out its finer details. It wasn’t just any light, but a fire! A sweet fire. A beautiful fire. A _warm_ fire. Oh, she could feel the heat send tiny kisses to her hard skin now, feel the glow melt the coldness of the air surrounding her…

“Stop right there!” the heat bit at her. 

She stopped.

“Who do you think you are? Edging near _my_ fire? Hmph!”

“I—I just wanted someplace to rest for the night. Maybe just even an hour.”

A pause. The agonizing detachment from warmth continued.

“Come closer,” the fire beckoned through gritted teeth.

The girl stepped closer to it, now only three or four meters away from its embrace. It was not alone, though. The inferno was accompanied by the frail and gnarled head of a human- an old woman. 

Her face was horrible, sagging with bags of sun-singed skin, and lined with eternal age. She sat crossed legged, slouching on the other side of the fire as she stared at the child for what seemed like a full minute or two, a cruel judgement being passed in her worn out mind.

“Hmph.”

Was that a yes for the young one to live for the night? Another cruel, cold “no”? The child’s mouth was opening to beg and she could not stop it.

“Please, it’s freezing! I’ve been—”

“Hand it over,” the hag demanded with a raspy croak. A long thin arm stretched out from under the weight of her vestments and towards the girl, palm held upside as if waiting for her to place something inside it.

“Hand over what?” the girl asked.

“I want the portions, all of them.”

Shocked at the proposal yet not desiring to concede, the child denied such a statement “Are you kidding? You’d think I’d honestly have food with me in this famine?”

“Give this one a break. If you’ve made it here this long, you’ve been fed well…”

She was growing nervous. As much as the girl craved a full stomach, the fire presented to her now was making her desperate, “I don’t have much, only a few slides of veg-meat and—”

“That’ll do.”

It was an unbearable pain for the youth to give up an entire portion to the shrunken hag. It wasn’t like she absolutely couldn’t live without it. Well...the old one wasn’t as young as she was and she certainly wasn’t still growing! The girl’s stomach cried as she forced herself to dig into her large collection-heap for some of its most valuable contents and then to hand them away, even if it gained her warmth.

She placed the few meal-stuffs in the outstretched claw before her and waited again for the response she craved.

“Sit,” a full mouth commanded.

She all-too-anxiously sat on the other side of the lovely flames, rubbing her palms rapidly together and then facing them close to the fire.

As she did so, she watched the old shrew chew in circular swings of her lower jaw and the impatient thrashing of yellow fangs, like banthas in a long-awaited field of lush green grass. But she wouldn’t know about that.

While making good use of all of the girl’s nourishment, the hag stared dead straight at her face and into her soul, taking in all that was there to find.

“Twelve.”

“Huh?” the girl replied.

“You are twelve, but near ready to change that.”

How in the Outer Rim was she able to guess that? Well, it was obvious the girl was young, but she had hoped herself to be fifteen, maybe even twenty by now. 

“How do you know?” she inquired.

“Heh, I’ve had enough daughters to know how to count.”

Another pause, another judgment. 

“Your name? You have one, don’chu?”

The girl considered this request for a moment, going over the potential consequences in her mind. A name was information, a name gave a person their own self. It also gave a mercenary or two a means of hunting y—

“Your name! What are you—deaf?!” the hag demanded, now shouting.

“Rey!” the girl cried in a panic, “...it’s Rey.”

“Hmph.”

The hag’s eyes drifted down to the collection-heap the child had laid on the sand next to her and at its contents poking out beneath the gaps of sheet and strap. Still trying to regain her wits, the child known as Rey edged a bit closer to the heap, protectively. Surely,the ol’ kook wouldn’t know what she had found. Rey hoped that the hag would stop this pestering and just leave her be.

“Rey,” the name slurred out of the hag’s mouth with a sharp edge, “show me.” 

She knew it.

“Show you what?” Rey tried to play innocent.

“Don’t play dumb with me _kriska_! Or would you rather be thrown back into the cold, what’s left of your flesh devoured by the gnaw-jaws?”

The thought sent shivers down Rey’s spine, much more than being detached from the fire. Yet if she had really found what she thought she found…

“I have an intact compu-tech module from what may be a hyperdrive. I’m not—”

As if her very words had triggered a fuse, the hag stood up from the ground, her eyes beating into Rey like a madwoman. 

Immediately, Rey dug into her contents again and pulled out something much smaller than compu-tech. The hag sat back down, still fixated on the girl. Even though what Rey had pulled out was small and hidden within her grasping palm, the old one saw, the old one knew.

“Please...Rey…,” she beckoned, much softer than her previous tone, “Come here and show these old eyes...I will not take it from you.” 

Cautiously, Rey edged to the other side of the fire towards the hag, and keeping a two feet’s distance, she held out her palm and opened it to reveal a small...stone. 

The old one’s eyes widened at the sight of the pebble, taking in all the details.

 _Truly_ , Rey thought, _she’s astonished!_

Astonished, indeed. After what seemed like a good two minutes of admiration, the hag finally looked up at Rey.

“That stone shall make a fierce warrior someday.”

Warrior? Then what she was truly implying must mean…

“Then it really is?!”

“Yes...kyber.”

A smile couldn’t help but to give away Rey’s joy over the newfound revelation. A kyber crystal, the stuff of lightsabers, laid in her hand! She noticed that the hag, too, wore a proud yet subtle grin...until it suddenly turned sour.

“There’s a big crack in the middle of it!”

That was what Rey was afraid of. 

“I—I know that! It was an accident, I swear!”

The hag’s eyes glared, emphasizing her disappointment, “Whaddya do?”

Rey sighed and let out a shy faint mumble of an explanation.

“Wha? Speak louder!” 

“I stepped on it!” Rey shouted.

“Stepped on it! Why you do a fool thing like that?”

A wave of shame swam over the girl, but she wouldn’t let the old one know that- she had gone too far already. She gathered back her previous confidence, “It doesn’t matter. That stone, cracked or not, will earn me enough portions to last me months.”

“What? Portions! Heh, you must have stepped on yourself, too!” the hag remarked before she spat something at the ground, then focused back on Rey, “What a stupid girl you are.”

“Am not!” Rey cried, pouting in her indignation.

“You very well are, bartering kyber to lazy tradesmen only so they profit from the black market, humph!” the hag straightened her back, making a series of crackling noises, then looked to the sky, “They were right.”

“Who was?”

“The _luccas_ —stars. They told me you were half-witted.”

Rey stared at the little old heap of a woman for a long moment, trying to process what she had just told her and whether she should have continued trekking through the dune sea.

“I must not be the only one then,” she muttered softly to herself.

“You’d better watch that. Do not take the _luccas_ lightly. They know all. They see all. Especially you. They follow all those underneath them.”

“Really?” Rey humored, “And what _do_ they know?”

“Everything. You. Me…,” her tone darkened “...those we dream of and long for.”

What was this? Rey’s attention was piqued now. 

“Ah, yes. You know now.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean, or what do you know? You are young and stupid, knowing nothing more than the dry ground under your feet. How can I possibly widen your narrow mind?” 

“Please tell me. I want to know more!”

A sly grin creased on that wrinkled face. Whether the shrew was fooling with her or not, she had to find out for sure.

“Of course you do...you’re stupid!” The hag looked back towards the dazzling night sky above them, the infinite pool of tiny white dots. Rey did so as well.

“Sometimes, we confuse stars for planets, or the other way around, but it is really neither, not to the _luccas_. They tell you what you want and don’t want to know and give what you give back.”

This prattle was growing tiresome again, offering Rey the kind of answers she was not looking for.

“What about those we long for? You said something about that!”

“Have you been listening to me at all, stupid one?” the hag sighed, “When I lost those of my own, the _luccas_ , they became. They look down, and smile at me…”

All was silent now, only the winds behind their backs singing to themselves until Rey finally mustered enough courage.

“Really?” she asked, wide and starry-eyed. The idea of constellation communication lept through her mind.

The old one’s thin, chapped lips crinkled and her face lit up, “The _luccas_ , they will not lie.”

Rey, beaming just as brightly now, proudly proclaimed “I’m gonna call you Granny!”

“You shall do no such thing—stupid girl!” the hag spat.

**. . .**

From far off, Niima Outpost was like a mirage to very lost tourists- a resurgence from the rest of the planet’s apparent lack of civilization. It was the only place between hundreds of miles of sand and more sand where one could acquire the luxuries that were food and water amongst the horrible drought that had plagued Jakku for years. Up close, though, the town (if anyone dared call it that) was a rude, inconsiderate, and merciless haven for horrible business dealings and shady scavengers. These two things were there primarily for one reason, though: Unkar Plutt, aka “the Blobfish.” 

Scavengers near and far would flow in and out of Niima throughout the day, hoping to make a trade substantial enough with Mr.Blobfish that they could go about their existence, often waiting in lines outside his booth, like the one Rey was in now.

She was one human and a Teedo away from making her daily trade, and anxious about it. The girl’s feet swiveled on the dusty ground underneath her toes, forming small circles as her hands gripped the straps of her collection-heap until her dried knuckles turned white. There was plenty reason for her nervousness, though. Even as close as she was to making a deal with Plutt, Rey was contemplating whether that deal would involve the kyber crystal now swaddled within the pocket of her pants. She had just bartered that compu-tech for half a liter of water, and surprisingly enough, she had nothing else amongst her garbage that would amount to even half a portion, nevermind a full meal. She knew she would have to trade it sometime or another.

 _It’s for an emergency_ , she argued with herself, _for a parched day._

But she was hungry _now._

Automatically, Rey and all the other creatures behind her shifted up a step. Now she was only a Teedo away from her final decision.

Her stomach was about to make that choice, though. It groaned and growled a guttural cry of its own with every passing second. Rey had cursed herself for giving away her only rations to that lazy shrew, because now she would have to give up the greatest find of her life.

Not wanting to think about the imminent loss of her treasure, Rey laid her eyes gloomily on the ground, the bottom of Unkar’s booth, the bystanders nearby, and a flash of bright white… 

A flash of bright white?

Zapped back into reality, she now focused on what looked to be...a droid? Yes, it was a droid, an astromech. 

Droids themselves were not an uncommon sight in Niima, often found following their masters and translating conversations between two business associates. Right off the bat, though, any competent scavenger could tell that this wasn’t that kind of droid. Those found here were old buckets of bolts coming to the end of their functioning lives and held together by clever wiring. The one Rey glared at now was a brand new R5-D2, gleaming with a fresh white base and slim areas of dark red, and from what she could tell, fully operational. 

Other than the appearance, there was something else off-putting about the droid. It was totally alone, huddling nervously behind a small heap of crates and storage jugs behind Unkar’s booth. Its flat-topped cone of a head swerved from left to right continuously, obviously wary of the hoarders nearby- and with good reason, too. If it were to be spotted by anyone else, the poor thing would be stripped and sold for scrap quicker than it could beep “Help!”. Rey was not anyone else, though.

“Shoota!” a harsh shriek emitted from the alien behind her and without a second thought, Rey jumped out of line, leaving the beast to take her place. 

_Definitely saving it for a parched day then,_ she thought, and started to edge her way towards the back of the booth the best she could without gaining any unwanted attention. 

Once she had rounded the back corner where the droid had kept poking its head in and out, Rey quickly crouched behind where it stood. The thing was so bewildered by her unexpected presence that it started to shake and chirp frantically, but quickly stopped when she had proved with a gentle smile and an assuring pat that she was no threat. Rey placed a single finger in front of her lips and warned the R5 unit with a raspy “shhh” to remain as quiet as it could beep. 

“Do you have a master?” she whispered, “Somewhere you should be?”

Matching her volume, the droid emitted a long low chirp. It was foolish of her to even attempt speaking with the droid, for Rey only knew a few sounds in binary. What she did hear from the unit though did not sound very high-hoped.

“You don’t have anyone...do you?” 

R5 swerved his cone of a head from side to side, as if imitating how a human shook theirs. 

“I thought so.”

A deep hole of pity formed in her Rey’s stomach. The droid was practically abandoned, and if that was really the case, it didn’t stand a chance on its own. Not in Niima. Not anywhere. 

Rey desperately searched her mind for any more possible options on what to do with the machine. Maybe she could…

“Whazz arz ou doinz lill onz?” an alien voice inquired, doing little to hide its malicious intent.

R5 shrieked a loud shrill and Rey immediately swooped around to find three rugged figures looming over them. They were tall (at least to Rey they were), covered in the usual dirty garb everyone wore, and their arms stretched out to cover all possible attempts of escape for the two unfortunate beings. Rey knew immediately what they had in mind and did not like it. 

Though the attempt was futile, Rey stood in front of R5 and held as much ground as she could, waving a small slab of jagged and dirty metal she thought of as a knife towards the thugs. She had wished a thousands time over at that moment that she had made a better weapon for herself, yet she tried not to let her fear escape the confidence of her voice.

“Stay back! This is...my droid!” 

The three thugs looked down on her as if she were littered trash, something to merely step over. Rey thought she heard a muffled garble that could pass for laughter behind their thick turbans. 

One of them finally lunged at her, grabbing her shoulders and thrusting her aside as the other two went for the droid. Rey thrashed herself away as hard as she could and lifted her knife to make a jab at the thug’s shoulder, but he had all too easily seen that coming and seized her wrist in its descent. He twisted her arm and held both of them together behind her back. Rey kicked and screamed towards the bystanders nearby, but she knew that would do nothing. No one made charity a common habit here unless they got something of it. 

She could now only watch as the other two slyly approached the helpless R5, now quivering as short mechanical appendages extended from the thin red aluminum platings on his cylindrical body and poked and pecked in the thugs’ direction. As if they were twigs, the two aliens kicked the extensions away and seized the robot. R5 squealed in what Rey could only assume was agony as they started to rip and tear away his platings and stick their filthy hands into the wiring underneath.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Rey screamed. She couldn’t stand watching R5 being reduced to a pile of screws and bolts. 

Frantically, her eyes darted all around her to find anything that could be used to her advantage. Ironically, she spotted her captor’s foot on the ground inches away her own. The alien uttered something loud and painful in a foreign tongue and his hold on her wrists ceased after she stepped on it hard without a second thought. Rey bolted away, grabbed her knife from where she had dropped it, and with all her might, raised it at one of the other two’s backs and...

It stopped. Rey tried forcing her hand to move, to attack, but it was held back by an immovable force. 

“Woa now. Back away! Back away!”

Rey turned to see a tall cat-like alien hovering over her and the thugs. Authoritatively, the creature wore a large circular helmet over its round yellow eyes and tight-fitted dirty wrappings which covered the lower half of his face down to his neck, and the rest was standard uniform for the Niima Outpost Militia—it was Constable Zuvio. 

She let out a deep sigh of relief as Zuvio let go of her wrist and she let her knife cautiously drop to her side. The three thugs also halted their siege and backed a few steps away from the officer and droid. There was not much escape for them at this point, though. Not far behind them appeared another officer of similar appearance, Zuvio’s cousin Drego who was eyeing them threateningly.

Rey peered at R5. No major damage was done, only a few loose plates and small bundles of wiring pulled outside of the droid’s body. Nothing she couldn’t fix. 

“What is going on here?” Zuvio demanded. 

Everyone, even R5 stood uncomfortably quiet. Even though Zuvio was a trustworthy source of justice, Rey feared a different kind that would find her as she eyed the nervous bandits. 

“Well then, the silent treatment, eh?” Zuvio peered down at Rey and read her eyes with a genuine sincerity that could be found nowhere else in the whole of the Western Reaches. His yellow orbs seemed to have told her eyes, “Come back and see me later so we can talk about this.” 

She would do that.

Zuvio’s eyes sharpened back at the three thugs. “Leave.” 

They all shared gazes with each other and shuffled away, Deputy Drego moving to the side and observing them as they made their way. One of them brushed against Rey as they passed, stiffening her body. She stuck her tongue out at their dwindling backsides. 

Her gaze turned back to the Constable. With a small nod, he let the two be and shifted away along with the Drego. Rey watched them leave until R5 brushed against her ankles. She shifted her focus towards the droid huddled anxiously at her feet.

Rey knelt down and patted the droid, about to offer words of comfort until she noticed something lying on the ground. She thought it was a random stone at first, until the rock glimmered a smooth shiny clear texture that could only belong to a crystal.

“Blast!” Rey exclaimed as she quickly grabbed her kyber and held it tightly within her palm. It must have fallen out of her pocket amidst the ruckus. How long had it been there? And had anyone noticed? 

R5’s beady ocular lenses inspected the hand in which Rey hid her stone. Making sure no other bystanders were paying any immediate attention, she opened it for him and he focused in on her possession. 

“It’s called kyber,” Rey answered the droid’s question before he had a chance to whistle it, “very valuable stuff.”

The mechanical cone of a head then peered back up to face her’s again, very quiet and very still.

“Nowhere to go, huh?” she asked.

With a soft chirp, the droid confirmed her suspicion. 

Rey sighed, “Well...I can escort you to the docking bay and…”

The droid beeped pitifully high-pitched and desperate, cutting her off. It was stupid to think that an ocular lense could display hopelessness, yet Rey found it beneath the twitching blackness, beneath her own sad and dirty face peering back.

She did not like this, as nice as the droid was. He would just bring her too much unwanted attention, like he already had. Yet… 

“Alright, you can come with me, but only long enough so I can repair your wiring, them we’ll find a decent place for you.”

**. . .**

They rose and fell, one by one. 

A large circle made of humans, humanoids, a variety of alien species and even a droid or two, enclosed two beings locked in a fiery face off, each one dueling with blades of colored light, waving them as if they were mighty swords. Once one of the two fell, it fled back into the shelter of the circle, and a new one appeared, more than ready to take the latter’s place. Of the two which stood now, one was a young male rodian. He wielded his weapon masterfully, and with a final sweep of blue light and a swift kick to his opponent’s stomach, the competitor was reduced to the ground, defeated. The rodian loomed over his adversary with an intense sense of pride.

In the circle of beings surrounding the two stood front and center another pair of prominent figures. The smaller was a well-aged human male, donned in sharp beige robes and shrouded in a tattered dark cloak, hood pulled back to reveal his serious, ever discerning expression and silver strands of shining whiteness invading his faded hazel hair and growing goatee. This was Luke, or more formally put: Grand Master. 

The taller one who stood expressionless next to the elder was a young man named Ben. Upon first sight, one would be taken aback by the very air around this one. His height, well above six feet, and his broad figure reeked of intimidation, yet his soft brown eyes pleaded compassion. Black waves of thick hair tumbled upon his long white face and two large ears and a painfully obvious nose, which the man was bashful of, stood out the most amongst the rest of the typical features. Both quietly watched the defeated human as he wobbled up from his fall and almost retreated back into the outer circle...almost.

“Can anyone tell me what was off about this gentleman’s form?” Luke inquired openly to all his students, hoping for a sign that his teaching had not simply gone in one ear and out the other.

A few mumblings here and there, but overall— silence. 

“Anyone at all?”

Again, silence. Luke sighed. Had anyone learned from the obvious flaws of the boy? Was it merely his own error in instruction? Time for a different approach. He turned to his nephew.

“Ben. Please, tell the class what you think.”

Ah, yes. Everyone knew Ben. All eyes immediately shifted towards him.

The suddenness of the request caught the young man off-guard, yet his voice never showed it. “Your eagerness to overthrow your opponent has taken over your form,” the words sung out of the Ben’s mouth as if they were a code, an anthem, “A Jedi’s only ambition is that of defense, not offense. Focus only on your enemy’s blows rather than his head.”

A slight grin twitched onto Luke’s face. He had made the right choice. “Would you please demonstrate the correct approach to Form 3 for us, Ben?” he requested, aloud.

As if fully expecting the command and ready to oblige, Ben approached the human and rodian in the center, his own lightsaber at hand. But before initiating his ready stance, he eyed the human now edging away from him and the rodian. He was a nervous little guy, yet desperate to learn what he could. Ben remembered that same boy from somewhere, a long time ago. 

He faced his opponent and took his ready position. 

The battle began. Quickly, the rodian swung deeply to Ben’s left, which he met with a quick block, vertical to the other’s blade. Over and over, the same pattern continued in different areas, sputters of turquoise sparks flying between them. All the while Ben remained focused with the task at hand, never taking his eyes off his opponent’s weapon. The rodian gave strong counterattacks, but had an all too predictable style. Calm and collected, Ben swiftly started to gain the upperhand, a small beam of a grin escaping from his held back lips.

_What is this? Pride, my old friend?_

No, no. That was an erratic emotion. Ben let the rodian take an attempted swish at his head this once and forced the feeling down, down and away from him. Another block, another dodge, a jab here and there.

 _Ah, another problem_ , he concluded, _this one lacks strength_. Every time their sabers had locked, Ben could feel the other’s push lessen and lessen, as if straining to even hold on. _We need a lesson about this._

Thus Ben pushed back fiercer. Perhaps then the Rodian would know what was in need of improvement. But its hold only dwindled even more. 

A warmth, a flooding warmth swelled in Ben’s mind as he focused more on his opponent’s weakness. He twirled in a full three-sixty motion and the being ducked beneath his blow. No, a flaw on his part. His torso now laid open and vulnerable. The rodian swung his weapon straight towards the thick of Ben’s waist and suddenly…

Stopped.

He stopped completely.

The Rodian was literally frozen in place, stuck in time. Only small wheezes from his upper chest puffed in and out. His lightsaber remained only two feet away from Ben, enough space to have dodged the blow. A look of desperate driven motivation smeared his face, Ben noticed, yet his eyes remained untouched. Only they moved and spoke, screaming with confused cries of terror.

The outer circled stared in a mix of horror and astonishment. Had Luke taught Master Ben that in a private lesson, or was it merely a style all his own? Similar mumbles and suspicions erupted in small but increasingly large cacophonies. 

Ben, too, stared at the still creature in suppressed amazement. He held onto the being as if it were on a leash, its entire self and movements under his full command. It wasn’t until Ben’s eyes had somehow found the forgotten company which surrounded him that he immediately realized the gravity of this leak in his mind and let loose his grasp on the Rodian. Ben quickly stood aside as the alien finished the failed swoop of his beam and then swung his body to the ground, the lightsaber flinging out of his hands, flying and and nearly scarring some of the poor unfortunates in its path. 

Ben straightened, retracting his saber and hinging it to his belt, and immediately offered his hand to the shriveled creature, who with a vigorous shake of his head refused in its wild daze and wobbled up on its own. 

The Jedi recomposed himself and now faced the many bewildered peers and that one he needed approval from the most, “No need to panic. This was just a simple demonstration of a new technique. Nothing to fear.”

Luke’s stern gaze sliced through and disassembled his nephew’s words as the mumblings started to die down into a fainted whisper or two, yet the students’ eyes continued to speculate on the grandest scale.

“This session is dismissed. Return to camp at once and proceed with evening meditations,” his voice boomed over the heads of his students, and with a quick jerk of his left arm in the air, the mass reluctantly but swiftly obeyed, leaving the grounds to the Grand Master and the young Master. 

The two’s eye contact never broke since the younger’s explanation continued as the bodies dispersed all around them. Once left in full isolation, the mind probing began.

“New technique? Either my memory is fading faster than I can make up babble like that, or you have done so already.”

“I’m sorry, Grand Master.” Ben stood modestly. That was always his undeniable responsibility.

Luke paused a moment and then replied, “My name is Luke… It always has been.”

“Yes, Uncle.” Ben corrected himself.

Luke was about to open his mouth again, about to chastise once more, until he remembered who he was talking to. 

“Ben. You’re a fine teacher…”

“Thank you, Uncle.”

“Yet that was...something more than instruction,” Luke’s tone grew deadly, as if he was not fatal before.

“I agree, but I do not know wher..whe..wurrr..”

A pain, a paralyzation struck Ben as he choked out his sentence. His appendages would not obey his brain’s command to move vigorously until the sky was dizzy. Instead they were stuck, rusted at their joints. His motions were jagged and robotic until they eventually stopped altogether. What was this? 

He was held by a full leash, under complete control of a massive and impenetrable Force. 

His eyes could move, they could breath and speak and scream, and they almost did as they followed the gray figure of Master Luke increase in size until it was he front of them, peering down and meeting them in their decreased status. How had he grown so tall all of a sudden? The old man seemed benign at first glance, but the depression behind him remained supreme as he faced his statue of a nephew. Ben tried stifling to reach his master, but those efforts only furthered the grasp restraining them. 

“No one else has noticed. Perhaps not even you at times, Benjamin. I have.” 

Ben thought he felt tricklings on his forehead and his skin chilled cold. Luke knew nothing. He wanted to immediately defend himself, but it was he who was now the Rodian, he who now was reduced to earth shattering emotions. Ripples of tingling splinters stabbed his legs, his arms, his neck and his head.

The shadow of his master dawned upon him as the next words broke all formalities, chopped and deadly, like a final blow, “This is the Dark Side.”

The young man felt the splinters bubble and group inside his head, now gripping the lumpy mass inside and squeezing it so tightly that he could feel it sucking itself in and internally explode. His vision grew foggier and shapes contorted in odd angles as his skin became pale white, the blood beneath it fleeing. He mentally screamed and cried through the Force as Luke all the while stared at his squirming nephew. 

_M-master..._ The words jaggedly appeared in the thoughts of the man and wobbled into form, _Please...please…_

Only after a lingered moment later did Luke let go. His nephew regained his sense of gravity and fell to the soft earth, hands holding his head as he breathed each gasp of breath with twitching movements, trying desperately to regain himself. 

“Ben,” he said, as if a totally different entity had entered into the old man’s body. Luke caressed his nephew in a much gentler, a much more caring and concerned tone, “I tell you time and time again of how much faith I have in you, so much faith for...so many reasons. Don’t let me lose it.”

Ben looked up at the old one’s eyes and blankly nodded, gasped once more, and picked himself up. Luke knew nothing. He knew nothing.

Grand Master had taught him once more, and Ben thought he was grateful to be given such attention. 

Luke roughly patted him on the back and rested his frail hand on the young man’s shoulder. No more seriousness for the day. Ben flinched only slightly at the gesture as he stood. 

“There now. I trust that was a proper remind—”

“Yes Uncle, it was. I have a renewed sense of the Dark Side’s danger and it shall not leave me.” Ben cut his master off in the most modest way possible.

“Good,” Luke nodded and turned to stroll towards the shelter of the native woodlands a ways away from where they stood. He had stopped himself only few steps into his trek, though, and faced Ben once more.

“Aren’t you coming back to camp?”

**. . .**

Camp was only half a mile’s walk through the woodlands and onto a thin strip of a sandy white shoreline kissing a clear aquamarine sea. On the brink of the horizon one could catch the last of the dwindling spread of the bright yellow orange of the day gone, swallowed by a now dawning and humongous nighttime. Small, faint white specs started to peek their way in and out, boasting their brightness. 

Out from the edges of forestry, feet resting in the sprinkled snow with Ben not far behind, Luke sensed two younglings to his left, some of the newer recruits most likely, laughing as they played skip-fish only thirteen meters farther down, close enough for him to make out their small figures.

He chuckled and shouted to them, “Go back to camp, it’s getting dark out here!”

Their small heads turned at his voice and in an unrehearsed sync, they frivolously responded, “Yes Grand Master!” and ran in his direction. Once they had reached him, huffing and puffing, they halted and panted, “Good evening, Grand Master,” then hurried on their way past him and to camp further down the shore. 

Behind him, Luke heard only the smallest sigh escape into the open air. That was Ben, wasn’t it? The young man was not usually one to seem agitated. Nevertheless, Luke had sensed the exhalation was forced. He peered behind his shoulder to find his nephew staring at the younglings as they dwindled towards the rest of the Order.

“My, this sure is a beauty,” Luke croaked, attempting to grasp what was on Ben’s mind. “I was thinking about resting here awhile longer. All the others seem to agree as well. And I know how you hate all the moving and such.”

“I suppose.” Ben concurred.

“You do understand why we do it, though, do you?” Luke asked. 

“I do. It’s just that…”

“What?”

“Every time we migrate to a different system, you hunt down all these pe...those with even an inkling of Force-potential. It’s not like they have any true abilities. You just pick them up and now there’s too many.” 

Ben stared out at the tiny blurs running into the distance and hoped he had used all the words he could, all the authority he had earned over the years, to reason with the old man. It was true—the Order was now spanning into the hundreds, far too many for the old man to handle on his own. Even with his help, there were so many padawans unaccounted for, blending too easily, too frequently into the crowd.

“Ben,” Luke said as he scratched his scruff of a beard, “you above all should know that the Force works in mysterious ways, flowing through every living thing. It just takes time, sometimes a little bit more than others, for them to polish that kind of power. The future of the Jedi depends on these people.” 

“Naturally. I just feel that it’s too much for you at this point, with no offense to your capabilities.”

“None taken at all,” Luke cleared his throat, “Don’t feel. Just accept.”

And that was that. 

Luke looked at the Jedi that was his nephew and shared a simple grin with him to which Ben mimicked the same. Perhaps he was lucky. Usually, no ordinary student would receive as much as a full sentence of a response out of Luke. As Master Jedi and, of course Luke’s nephew, Ben was promoted to swift conversations. Yet in the back of his mind, Ben knew he was right, and that worry lingered on as they made their way west of the shoreline.

 

By evening the camp was aglow. Small hives of fire flickered into the darkness at the center of each group laid out on along the shore. Each retained the similar circle formation from their open training activities, ranging from lonely trios here and there to bursting young third-stagers in the tens and twenties, usually set apart by age. Yet every coterie was kept alive by the constant chattering that came with community, the New Order being no exception.

Ben Solo, naturally, sat center amongst the largest group, gathering only the most trained and talented of their kind, especially those who, like him, had become full Jedi themselves. The men and women horsed and joked under the star-spread that night as they ate their evening meal. There was special talk of something the older padawans had been gossiping about, something that had occurred during their training that day. Amongst the chatter, all eyes darted on and off the more silent than usual Ben, begging for an explanation as to why their quiet lives had been shaken over this petty rumor. He knew, and it only made his voice slur out even more awkwardly when he had to quickly cut off all inquiries with remark to a simple err in instruction. And despite their constant flirts, teases, and moans, he would say nothing more as he sat and chewed his food over the thoughts that couldn’t be theirs. 

Amidst all the cacophonies that were the voices of high-pitched padawans, Luke sat alone, silent, and right in the center of all the groups. Ben’s eyes would flicker once in a while to the elder who sat untouched from the rest of the day in a firm cross-legged position, eyes closed, harms resting against his knees, and mind in a deep and ancient meditation. He wondered sometimes if his Master connected to each one of them every night in such way, whether it be by eavesdropping through the senses or a reassurances he issued out from his own undying influence on the Force. He would note that sometimes the all-powerful Grand Master Luke Skywalker would claw at the itchy hazel scruff needling along his jaw and the puff on his chin or crease his eyes and mouth in such a revealing way that one would think he had just discovered a new answer to the galaxy’s many complications. The man was rigid, wise, and practically omnipotent. And Ben hoped to never sit besides him.

Tonight was different, though. Ben did not need the Force, only his deducting, to notice that something weighed his Master’s mind down heavily (be it the grim lack of scruffing or his more sinister inward stare), and it made him sick to his stomach. 

_He knows nothing._

Ah, but this was Luke, _Uncle_ Luke. Was that small outbreak today really enough to...? No, no, it was not. He knew he could handle whatever Luke could barrel his way now.

But if he couldn’t?

There! It was then that Luke had ceased the personality in his practice altogether as he took his time standing up, far too early, and searching amongst the many students as they now all took notice of the promptness of their Grand Master. This early cease in meditation was unusual, even for them, and could only mean one of two things- one, that Luke had some serious beef with one of them and that person was in for the chastisement of their life, or two, that Luke had an announcement. 

Amid the persistent speculating stares and whispers, Ben sat dead still and his eyes never left Luke. They reached out for him, as if shouting “Here I am. What is it you are going to say?” (after all, he was second in command to Luke himself, and if there was something to be known, he should be the first to assess just that) but then turning into “Don’t say anything. You know nothing.” Luke heard, Luke found them and he kept them there for a lingering moment before his mouth creaked open and a noise bellowed from inside.

“Attention, everyone! Attention…”

_Don’t say anything._

“There is something that you all should know and anticipate in the days to come. Something that may just as well change the course of the Order itself…”

No one dared to lift their tongues now, not even shift amongst the voice keeping guard over all of them. He had their undying attention. 

“I have trained, taught, and labored with each and everyone of you, even the rawest younglings of our batch,” his eyes shifted lovingly to the younger students holding back squeals and giggles nearby, “Sometimes I come to think that I've taught all I can. Now, I believe that…”

What was this turning into? What was Grand Master trying to say? Fears of his maybe imminent death now spread like rapid fire amongst each group.

“Settle down now, settle down. This is certainly no misfortune. Quite the opposite, actually. Over the years, there has been one amongst all my students who has exceeded in all areas a Jedi should master over, and thus has earned that title. That very Jedi will take my place as your Grand Master… Benjamin, will you please stand from where you are seated?”

 _What?_ Ben tried to process all the new words as they flooded into his consciousness: Jedi, Grand Master, standing…

The awed expressions from his group and gaping mouths of nearly all the younglings nearby immediately targeted him. He turned to his left, to his right, to see all in the Order doing likewise and found it his immediate but reluctant responsibility to stand and listen to the momentous words to come, so he did.

“As you all know, Master Ben Solo’s twenty-third birthday will be coming at the dawn of next month. On that day, he will be ordained your new Grand Master.”

First the silence lingered, then an explosion of whoops and yelps of laughter filled the air around Ben, and smiles crowded him in a tight box with no openings in immediate sight. He found himself shaking the hands of his comrades and the smaller ones tugging at his feet. He could sense his Master’s eyes still apprehended his every move. 

_Jedi, Grand Master, taking my place…_

His eyes widened and his movements slowed as he finally pieced the words together. The Jedi Order, the fate of the galaxy...belonged to him. His head started to ache again, similar to what Luke had disciplined him with today, yet different in its familiar, soothing streams that wove itself through the words in his mind. It was the pride he did not like, yet craved. 

His voice and another deep, raw one spoke above all in perfect unison, _The New Jedi will rise. What will you do?_

He looked into the eyes of everyone around him and saw the unquestioned faith inside each one. No, this was too much at once, he could not accept this now. Ben backed away from all of the slowly saddening and confused faces and walked hurriedly down the beach and into the night. 

**...**

The cresting sand bed was spared no mercy from the waves which crashed upon it, one by one. With loud blue booms, they hugged the sand and were soaked inside of the damp earth until the next came. Yet despite all the trivial chaos they caused, they were natural and welcomed. 

Sometimes the water would reach the feet of the young man who carelessly laid them out bare on the sand as he sat facing the ocean, unfazed by the thought of wetness or the hassle of being dry. The waves would pool around his sinking toes and soles buried slightly into the grains, then retreat back into the wider body of water from which they came. 

_Grand Master… The New Jedi…_

In the distance Ben Solo saw a much larger, grander wave start to rise amongst the busy waters and reach for the daunting sky above it until it haphazardly fell and crashed back into the ocean and died. 

_What will you do Ben?_

“I don’t know,” he mumbled soft enough that only he should hear. 

“Well I suppose it’s only proper.”

The second voice made Ben nearly jump out of his skin, his head turned behind his shoulder to see his Master walking towards him and eventually sit close besides him.

“Now I know I should have given you a heads up beforehand, but news would have spread either way. Ben, I can understand if you’re slightly nervous…”

“Hmm,” Ben sounded, a hint of sarcasm built in the foundation of his tone, “slightly nervous?”

Luke ignored that, “...but this is no revelation. We have been discussing this for years now.”

“Yet you never warned me that it would be _this_ soon.”

“I—I know. And I am sorry for that, but Ben, I’m not getting any younger. And what’s worse is...” Luke’s words spewed slower and grew grim and foreboding.

“...Is?” Ben asked.

Luke looked into his nephew’s face and seemed to consider his next words, “I have so much faith in your ability, more than what my own capabilities can accomplish for the Order.”

“Don’t say that. You’re the strongest being in the galaxy!”

“Perhaps, at one time…” he rested his hand on Ben’s shoulder, “Not now. Out of all, Benjamin, you are the only one I would truly trust with the Order. If anything were to happen, someone strong must rise to lead the New Jedi.” 

A dark cloud formed above Ben’s head as he searched the tired grey eyes of his old uncle for any sense of tease or bluff, but found none. He did not fully grasp what he was alluding too, but he could understand duty.

“I understand, Master. And I only hope to follow your footsteps faithfully as the head of the Jedi.”

A desperate, grateful grin creased onto Luke’s face, “I knew you would.” And with that, he pulled his hand away from Ben and shifted to lighter conversation, “Lovely evening, isn’t it?” his eyes lifted to the sky above instead of the crashing sea below. 

Ben did the same and at once noticed the billions of tiny flickering white specks etched into the contrasting navy-blue night. How could he have forgotten them? They dazzled and danced between each other like a never-ending community all their own, battling to win the attention of the two Jedi underneath their world, each in their own unique way.

“Enchanting,” he concurred in his still soft voice, as if afraid to break the beauty. 

“Y’know, when I was only a bit younger than you, my Aunt Beru, Uncle Owen, and I would sit out in front of our domes some nights and just stare at these things for hours. Even for a planet as backwater as Tatooine, the stars were a constant pastime. Oh, it seems like so long ago.”

“Must have been nice—your family, I mean.” 

Ah, Luke was starting to see through to his nephew, “Oh, we had those times… Heh, Aunt Beru liked to make up these old wives’ tales about certain constellations n’ such. For instance,” he raised a withering finger to one vague speck in the sky, “over there is Corlag, right? You can tell because it’s the one in the lower right corner of the Truiis Formation. Well, she’d say something like if you ever find yourself on a foreign system and spot Corlag, pleasant travels from there on are sure to follow.”

“Mhmm,” Ben grunted to remind his Uncle he was still listening.

Luke eyed Ben for a split second and continued, “She’d also say that each one of us has a special star, one that would always follow us no matter where we roamed, and in a way, represents all the people we think about, we dream about, those who cannot particularly be with us. But that star will always be there, and those people will see it, too, when you think of them…” Luke suddenly stopped his soliloquy when he heard chuckling.

Ben could not help but laugh, “This is wonderful, Uncle, but I’m afraid you are a handful too many years late. I’m sure the younglings would love a good fairy-tale, though.”

Luke laughed at his own silly words as well. It was an attempt at something. 

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he sighed as he sat up and patted Ben’s shoulder one last time, “Just like your father, you are.”

Ben’s laughter died down awkwardly little by little, until his Master was finally gone, leaving him to the company of the stars, and to those he thought of most.

He lifted his head back up towards the sky. The gas giants still laid there, twinkling before him. His eyes wandered, as if lost in an unknown and crowded metropolis and he recognized other planets besides Corlag, particular systems such as Shantipole and perhaps Mon Cala. 

There were many more out there, he knew, and all were of the utmost bedazzlement, yet there was now one that was especially large and bright which he thought he had seen before, but probably glazed over. It was beautiful, with almost a smooth round edge to it that it challenged the neighbouring three moons themselves. He gawked at it for a moment.

_But that star will always be there, and those people will see it, too, when you think of them…_

Ben stood and edged closer to the very crest of the waves to find a small object of substantial weight, and after acquiring a pebble of those requirements, looked back at the star and with a fierce momentum, swung it in its direction until it was absorbed away into the ball of light.

**. . .**

The waves of sand sprinkled and slid down the steep slope of a dune as Rey cozily sat, shifting so as to sink the good majority of her body into the softness, the mark of finally settling down after a hard day’s labor. It was the best she could manage to keep herself warm in the colder parts of the night. Next to her laid her collection heap, clumsily bundled together in the lone sheet she used to carry it on her back during the day. Usually, she would have to keep one eye open every now and then, even as she slept, to make sure the pile wasn’t blown away by the unpredictable winds or that waves of shifting sands would not bury it who-knows-where. She wouldn’t worry tonight, though, for she had a lookout guard all her own.

“Zurrrp beep?”

“Urhm,” Rey tried to interpret the sounds, “you’re hungry?”

A sharp and quick wurbble emitted from the impatient R5 unit.

“No, no,” she admitted and sighed, only a hint of embarrassment escaped her voice, but it was enough, “of course you’re not.”

Though she could not recite full and eloquent monologues in binary quite yet, the few days the droid and she had spent together had greatly widened her grasp on the droid language, enough so that she could make out easy and common responses such as “yes”, “no”, “stay back”, “woa!”, and so forth.

The droid repeated the sequence of sounds again, this time a tiny bit slower than before.

“Hmm...you’re tired?”

A swift, encouraging chirp, pushing her to continue.

“Okay, okay... Your joints are stiff!”

One high-pitched beep.

Rey beamed. She had never felt anything in her day-to-day life besides fatigue and the loud burps and rumblings of her stomach before meeting R5. It felt strangely pleasant to simply _know and experience_ new things she had never considered before. It gave her something she could not quite explain, yet added a substantial layer of confidence to her disposition: pride. 

Rey laid her back down onto the sand and flexed her arms behind her head, hands almost hugging the back of her neck. 

_Enough for today_ , she concluded, _Today was good._

She could feel and hear R5 speed next to her and then situate himself the best his clunky controls could. She smiled at the droid peering down at her then turned her gaze towards the widened sky before them. If there was anything left on Jakku that could shine, it was most certainly the most precious and inaccessible treasures of them all—the nighttime stars.

“Lu-chas!” Rey sounded out slow and exuberantly as she admired the sparkles up above.

R5 emitted a high-pitched squeal of curiosity.

“Up there!” Rey pointed towards the sky. 

As R5’s two beady lenses followed her finger, her eyes did the same and both pairs found that it was pointed directly at one “lucca” in particular. It was possibly the most beautiful thing Rey had ever seen—big and white and round like an apparition, twinkling the brightest and most energetically amongst the all the others. 

“Woa,” Rey thought she felt her lips mumble as she stared awestricken. Had this lucca been there the whole time or was it new? She couldn’t have possibly missed this one, for she had named (or, at least, was in the process of naming) all the others and noted where they lay in the sky. 

Wait, what was that?

She squinted her eyes as she investigated the newfound diamond. It was barely noticeable, but as Rey focused more, the bigger it grew— a black dot. It was coming from the same direction as the lucca and heading towards...her! 

“Ah!” Rey scrambled herself out of the sand and hurried away from that spot. She heard R5 squeal nervously from behind her and then loud “thunk”. She warily turned back around to see a bewildered R5-D2 and...a rock.

Was that what was flying out of the sky? A simple rock? 

As R5 persisted in a rant Rey knelt down next to him and picked up the rock. It wasn’t like any simple stone native to these parts of Jakku. It was round and smooth and _wet_. She circled the object with her fingers then rubbed them together, taking in the odd dampness on her skin. There was no place as far into the Goazon Badlands as she was where water could be salvaged, not in this drought, and especially not from the sky of all places. She lifted it up to the nose, took a sniff, and almost coughed. It was an incredibly bitter, _salty_ smell. Did the sky really smell like that? 

Rey lifted her eyes back towards the origin of the rock, searching for anything new that might give her a clue as to how this strange occurrence was possible, but only found the dazzling nighttime above and that one bright lucca. 

_...those we dream of and long for_ , Rey pondered, recalling those ancient words carved into her heart, _They tell you what you want and don’t want to know and give what you give back._

“Perhaps…” Rey mumbled inquisitively, “maybe…”

With all the might and motion a twelve year old girl could muster, Rey held the hand which held the pebble back and with an unnatural amount of force, threw it at the lone lucca. Successfully, it disappeared into its whiteness.

“Do you think,” she asked R5 who now stationed himself curious as ever next to her, “that they might...that it really might be who I think it is?”

That notion must have sounded especially absurd to the droid, something that could care less for idiotic superstition, but she had to voice her hope to someone. R5 emitted a slow, low hum, then an eager silence as they watched and waited.

**. . .**

Ben Solo had given up on the day and the blasted evening as he made his way away from the waves and turned his back to the stars. He now found himself in need of more important ways to spend his time. After all, he was going to have a whole Order to run soon. Luke’s words still hummed and repeated themselves as if they were parts of a song in his head and would not let him forget them. Perhaps once he was Grand Master, the Jedi would finally be able to settle down.

A buzzing sensation started to vibrate in the back of his head, then with each passing second grew more and more intense. Something was coming… He turned around and saw…

“Ow!” Ben moaned after something hard smacked his forehead. 

He rubbed the spot as it throbbed from the sudden impact and could feel it swell more than he would’ve liked. What in the Outer Rim? Still groaning from the pain but finding it bearable, he looked around on the ground surrounding him to find what was it that had hit him and found...the stone. It laid snugly about a meter away from him in the sand, waiting to be retrieved. Reluctantly, Ben did just that and inspected it, though knew fully well that it was indeed the same stone he had thrown at the...the star?

He looked back at that one star placed straight above in the night sky, looking down upon him. But that was absurd—pure nonsense and nothing more! No one was watching him, especially not from a star, a gas giant, a heap of fire-rock millions of miles away. His head still really hurt, though.

Despite all this, he threw the damn thing back.

**. . .**

She stood nervously, her legs quivering as she stood on top of the dune, her eyes never leaving the lucca. The pebble was bound to come back, right? If the shrew was right then it had to!

R5 broke the thick and painful silence with a loud shrill, exclaiming with almost as much joy as she had of the incoming return—the rock was coming back! No longer fearful of being struck in its path Rey jumped and cried and whooped with joy as it made its descent towards her, and fast. She ran a few yards back as quickly as her legs could carry but still watching the stone as it flew down, down, and eventually into her cupped hands. She fell to the ground and laughed as she hugged the small thing. 

Her family, they were there! The shew was right, they knew where she was!

R5 nudged her, pleading with a glossy glare in his lenses to have a look for himself. Rey gladly opened her palms to reveal the stone, she too now taking a moment to admire it. It was indeed the same stone the lucca had given her. She just had to speak with it. Afterall, if a star could throw rocks, then it most certainly could hear and speak with her as well.

After a quick moment, she placed the stone gingerly on top of R5’s flat cone head and faced the lucca. 

“Mom!...Papa! I’m here, I haven’t left! I’m here!” she cried to it with a smile as wide as the crescent moon on her face, yet the more she stared at the lucca, the more it hung with a foreboding reticence over her, and the more her smile slowly started to crease into a frown.

Something...something about the lucca took the idea of her parents slowly away from her and replaced them instead with a horrible and heavy sense of frustration and responsibility. She could not remember ever being mad at her family, or cursing their long-forgotten names, yet she felt an intense desire to. And she loved her parents! 

Rey placed her hand firmly a top of her mouth to suppress such mean slurs and callouts and searched again for her parents up there. She was so sure, so ready to encounter them, yet...what she found now upon further investigation, was that she could not sense them at all anymore as the burden in her heart and the anger in her mind grew larger within her. 

Words, a voice she could not recognize, echoed in her ears. They were mean, sour, and full of the sadness she had not felt in a long time. And they only grew louder as she continued to plead with the lucca. Her parents were not there. Something far worse was. The shrew had never warned her of this.

She had not noticed how R5 hand been standing besides her the whole time, most likely concerned of her curious behavior. The rock still stood on his head. With all the anger, all the pent up hate and desperation, Rey quickly grabbed it and flung it back at the lucca, not caring if it came back and died underneath the sands of this dreaded system. 

“C’mon, I’m tired,” she snapped at the droid and turned away, running down the steep dune she once stood on. She buried herself at the bottom, awaiting what she hoped would be sleep. 

What was really happening, R5-D2 could never compute. 

**. . .**

As he expected yet never dared hope, the stone returned. 

Ben stepped a few paces back as the rock made its landing cozily in front of him, almost at his feet. He sighed quietly and approached the stone, picked it up after moment, and then tossed it carelessly behind him. He peered up above at that star. It laid there, now bigger than ever, twinkling quietly and calmly to itself, which only made it more imposing. It shone over him like a warm cloud of blue and gray—a terrible mix. The longer he tried reasoning with it, though, all the more questions he had.

He had thought he had hated the breast that nurtured him, the words that left him with a snarky grin, yet as he stared, he felt his anger slowly fade into something else, something _happy_. Memories he thought were long dead within the caverns of his head blossomed to life, faces her could make out as clear as day. 

He had thought he heard a voice amongst it all, calling out to him from somewhere, hopeful, desperate, and painfully unfamiliar. He almost caught himself peering behind him to see if anyone was nearby but found only the self-thrown stone he has tossed away lying in the sand. This was nonsense. Surely, he was turning as mad as his uncle.

However this phenomenon (or even a prank by the older padawans!) occurred, Ben had no more tolerance for it. If his parents wanted to play games, then damn them all. He would soon be Grand Master! Camp was nearly an hour and a half’s walk away and dawn would rise in nearly four. It did not leave him much time to prepare for the day. 

**. . .**

Rey awoke to a sharp and desperate shrill far off into the night. The insistent cry made her nearly jolt upright from where she laid, the tiny hairs on her body standing with a paralyzed shock. More of the shrills moaned on and off all around her and she could not tell from which direction it came. Each cry was possibly the most horrible thing she had ever heard! Static, mixed with loud mewing that spewed together into one in-sync plea for an end to its terrors. 

She remembered R5 and her head spun in circles. Where was he?! She jumped to her feet and cupping her hands, yelled into the night, “R5! R5-D2! Where are you?” 

Rey was so disoriented and bewildered that she had nearly tripped over her collection-heap, or what was once a heap: the fabric that had bundled it together was nowhere to be found and the items it kept were scattered, hundreds of small pieces half-buried in the sands all around her. Lines, tracks, a few feet away from where she stood, were drawn like a path in the sand, forming a trail over the dune. Following it, she ran up the sand hill. Now elevated, Rey had a wide view of the surrounding desert. Dark objects laid yards away from each other, left along the trail. Her eyes hurriedly followed them until she spotted...oh no.

“Hey!” Her face was flushed red and her eyes burned, “Stop it! Stop it!” 

As fast as her legs could fly, Rey ran down the slope, ignoring all the scattered parts of an R5 unit and rushed towards the thugs—the murderers– disassembling her only friend in the galaxy, despite his cries having long been silenced. 

**. . .**

**__**_We could incorporate more combat, teach the kids how to really use their sabers_ , Ben considered as he yawned and trudged along the everlasting shoreline. Even if he was making cautious plans for the future ahead, he was glad that sleep was only a mile or two more away. 

Suddenly, there was that blasted buzzing again, a flash of danger enveloped his conscious. He instinctively, for some reason, looked to the star above yet his senses were not calming at its sight. He turned his head to his left, to the rustling forestry nearby. 

He was not alone.

“Come out of there at once. What are you doing out here?” his called out in a stern and authoritative tone.

Out of the bushes and from the shadows of the trees emerged two dark figures. Though the darkness made their identity difficult to pinpoint, Ben stood his ground, unintimidated as they slowly approached him. Suddenly, another sweep of an alerting sense triggered his adrenaline. Ben spun to see another threat rushing towards him, a lightsaber ready in hand—the rodian from this afternoon! 

Ben had but a second to thrust his hand towards the alien and send him flailing back a few meters through the air and to the ground. He quickly sensed the other two padawans, most likely companions of the rodian, coming from behind and did the same to them with more force than he had used on the third. 

“You are to give me an explanation for your actions at once,” his voice was unchanged and blunt, intolerant of any disobedience or rebellious behavior from his students. If this was a game, he was not compelled to play.

“You filthy human!,” the rodian spat in its muffled accent filled with wrath and a renewed sense of strength. “You tried to kill me!”

“Better watch how you speak to your superiors, youngling. I thought I told you all that revenge is not the way of the Jedi,” Ben’s eyes met all of their cruel gazes. “If you leave with me now, peacefully, we can forget this encounter. I won’t hold it against your training.”

Their eyes did not speak of peace, though. 

_The only way they’ll be put into place is if you put them there. You are the Master_ , a deep and satisfied voice hummed somewhere in the distance.

“Filthy human…” the rodian muttered with hate, “You think you can stomp over whomever you choose. You will not be my Master! No one can oppress me!”

“Then you should have reconsidered joining the Jedi.”

The Rodian was starting to pick himself up from the ground and retrieved his saber laying nearby, “No words can save. Not now…”

Ben was already making an effort to leave the padawans be- he was tired enough as it was. The Rodian was all talk but no—

“It’s no wonder Luke is appointing you to stink all over us. Who better than the all-powerful Skywalker to take over?”

Ben was already strolling away, calmly past the restless sea.

“Or maybe it’s because you're stickin parents can’t be proud of you any other way!”

He halted, not expecting that at all. His body quivered, standing as still as the sea. The words that proceeded from his mouth now were crude, impatient, and very dark. “Go back and leave.”

The Rodian didn’t hear, “I wouldn’t blame em! What else would they do with a kid like you?” a saber hummed to life, queuing the other two padawans to do the same with theirs. 

Ben grimly faced them. Everyone was aware of his family, where he came from, but no one ever _knew_. He had no right to say those things to him, no right at all.

_They know nothing. Show them who is superior. Show them the power of the…_

Ben’s hand instinctively reached for the saber underneath the folds of his robe as the three assailants lunged towards him. He did not want to fight his students and he downright shouldn’t. Yet, he readied himself for their fury. 

Before anything else, there was a brilliant clash of multicolored fire.

**. . .**

The little girl was no match for three grown males and would surely suffer the same fate as the pile of scrap metal torn apart amongst them, but that never occurred to her as she rushed towards them with nothing but all the hate and loathing and fury bursting from within her. Though they were ready for her, they were not ready for what had possessed her.

The first thug she encountered, Rey kicked straight in his gut then firmly shoved to the ground. The alien squirmed, hugging his stomach in pain while Rey quickly stole the long metal piece of piping he used as a staff. As she ran towards the other two, her watery eyes darted towards the lucca above and asked why it had tormented her so.

**. . .**

 

With an unnatural strength surging through his veins and empowering his muscles, Ben pushed back the three blades connecting with his. Back, back, until with a final shove he gained the brief few seconds of space he needed.

He could feel his parents, his bloodline, whoever it was, looking down on him from their holy throne in the sky and gave them his fire.

He twirled his saber in his hand and with an thrust he locked with one of the padawan’s blades. Using that as a connecting weight, he held the saber up with his, the padawan still attempting to firmly hold on, and then used his strength to pull the other’s body past his left and propel him to the ground. Then, he moved onto the next.

**. . .**

A mysterious source of strength guided and controlled Rey’s movements from then on- an energy that told her what to do and where to strike. 

She used it to spin her weapon menacingly, then thrusted it in the space between the next thug’s arm and torso. Using that lock, her swerved behind him and pushed him to the ground. She kicked some sand in his eyes and continued on to another thug.

**. . .**

The second padawan raised his saber towards Ben’s head but did not receive the pleasure of striking. Using the Force, Ben propelled the saber out of his hands and pushed him far back onto the ground as well. 

An urgent sense of danger erupted in Ben’s mind and he immediately turned around and found none other than the Rodian’s blade swooshing from above. Automatically, Ben pulled out his blade just in time to block and both found each other face to face with one another.

**. . .**

With her newfound power, Rey waved her staff powerfully in front of the oncoming thug, knocking the makeshift pistol from his hands and smacking them in the process. The thug yelped and held his hands in pain, but Rey denied him her compassion and commenced towards the final purpetrator. 

**. . .**

Sparks sputtered and flew dangerously from the intersecting beams between the two faces. The Rodian was now using the titantic amount of strength he had lacked before to push his blade father towards Ben’s shoulder, close enough to almost scorch him.

“This isn’t what we taught you!” Ben attempted, pleading again with the padawan, though he hadn’t much hope for a peaceful end to the night this time. “Why are you doing this?” 

The Rodian stared him down in an agonizing silence. Even as Ben stared into his two large, red eyes, he received no response, just an emptiness that unnerved him to the core. The Rodian seemed to be pushing the burning blade harder and further onto Ben, fatally close, and all his efforts only drove it down more. He needed to stop this whatever way he could before there would never be a new Grand Master.

_Strike me down._

Ben seemed to blink, and when he quickly batted his eyes open again he gasped in horror. The rodian was gone! In his place was a tall and gaunt figure with a bald, pale, twisted face that gave off the impression of the Dark Side incarnate. Ben screamed at the thing in horror, for he knew everything now, but didn’t want it to be true. The figure pressed onto him again with a final thrust, and Ben thought he was done for, until he quickly found out that was indeed still functioning, his saber miraculously keeping him inches away from the grasp of the figure.

_Use your strength._

Ben felt a resurgence of warmth and adrenaline return to his body, his arms, his feet. Taking this chance to rid himself of his greatest opponent, Ben thrust his saber back, and whilst the two blades were still connected, kicked the figure’s shin in and caused it to stumble, groaning from the sharp impact. He then kicked the saber out of its hand. Now was his chance! With a spin of his saber and a final liberating swing, he jabbed at the thing’s shoulder, crippling it. It emitted a high-pitched shriek and grabbed its fresh burning shoulder with its left hands and continued crying like an injured animal. Only, it was not just an animal- it was the Rodian again.

**. . .**

The last one had no spine. Rey took out his feet first and then hit the thug’s hand, causing him to drop his shiv. And with a final, satisfying blow, she used the pipe to smack him right in the shoulder and sent him spinning to the sand, his mouth a bleeding mess. 

_It serves them right!_ , she thought as her eye glared and burned through the thug, _They’re monsters, all of them!_

She did not feel very righteous, though.Notin the least. But she didn’t care what she really felt in the present moment. As the three murderers ran far, far away from the crazy human girl and her stick, her eyes remained on what was left of the many parts of R5-D2. 

A foot or two away from her feet laid one of his mechanical appendages pointed in her direction: two small robotic finger-like claws opened wide, as if begging for someone to save the rest of its body. Rey slowly passed it and made her way to the wreckage of the main hull. 

Cautiously, as if scared to break what was already broken, she knelt down infront of it. R5’s head was still in place, but barely attached. One of the lenses of his beady eye was gone, the other badly cracked and hanging loose. That did not stop it from staring at her judgmentally, condemning her lack of proper parenting. 

She sniffled and pulled her eyes away from R5’s and inspected what was left inside of his body. Most of the plating had been torn away, making it easy for her to peer in. She gasped upon what she saw, though she shouldn’t have been surprised: most of the precious internal components had been savagely ripped out, leaving only loose wiring jutting out here and there, and the rest of the once functioning robotic organs, which were a dime a dozen, slumping clumsily at odd, uncomfortable angles. She could gain nasty cuts and a shock or two if she were to carelessly put her hand inside. 

Suddenly, there was a flicker!

It was brief and continuous, lodged in some of the farther depths of salvage, but not completely hidden. What was that? She didn’t want to disturb the droid more than he already had been, but something told her to investigate.

“Oh R5,” she pleaded with the dead droid as she gradually lodged her arm inside, “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

It was a difficult task, but she eventually felt for what she thought she was looking for. Rey grabbed the small object and pulled her arm back out. When she opened her fist, what she found inside of it was…

her kyber crystal.

What? What was this doing inside R5? Rey had always kept it cozily hidden within her collection-heap ever since it had fallen from her pocket back at Niima. Then again, her collection-heap had been raided by, by… 

Her eyes widened, and her jaw nearly dropped. The racks leading away from her, the crystal found _inside_ R5…

She had loved R5 as if he were a little brother! She had cared for him, _trusted_ him and he had—

He had stolen from her.

**. . .**

Ben was trying to process what was lying on the ground in front of him, the screams of agony filling his ears and cutting apart his brain. He found himself losing his breath and feeling dizzy. Luke was here somewhere now; he could sense his eyes on him, as well as the eyes of two others. He had nearly killed his student. 

Regaining his clarity, he quickly knelt to the Rodian’s side and attempted to help him up but the alien squirmed away from him, still in shock and still bleeding. Ben stood back, but he thought the rest of the world around him was crashing down. What had he done?

He turned around and surely enough, Luke was running as fast as his age would allow him to towards him along with the two others, but upon Ben’s motion towards them, backed a few paces away. Luke did not, only rushed past Ben and knelt besides his injured student. Seeing the situation for himself now, he nevertheless turned towards his nephew and asked, confused and for the first time Ben had ever witnessed: scared to death. “What happened?”

Ben opened his mouth to say something to his Master, to defend himself possibly? Yet no words would come out as he watched the old man gently support the Rodian. He clenched his fists to hold back all the mixed feelings and the nausea, and ran away from these Jedi.

**. . .**

The weight of the tiny rock in her palm had drowned her in misery. Rey looked at the bucket of bolts that was her friend. She looked at the thief and her face grew redder than it ever had before and felt more hot and steamy than the cruelest sun’s laughter. She could feel her eyes well up faster than what she would have liked and kicked the dead droid, hard until there was a nasty dent on what little metal skin it had left and her toes bled from behind her thin moccasins.

She hated him. Oh, she hated him.

Her heart thumped and boomed within her breast as the leftover adrenaline fueled her sorrow and then let itself out into the real world as long streams of sparkling tears running down the little girl’s face. It was stupid to do so, for she had not cared for most things in these past ten minutes, yet Rey ran up another high dune and shouted at the top her lungs anyway. 

“Why aren’t you here?! Why couldn’t you stop this?!”

Rey knew that the person in the lucca was not her parents, but she acted as if it were anyway. She needed them, she cried for them.

“Ma..ma!” she cried. “Pa-pa!” she sobbed. And what followed was incoherent amongst the waterfall rushing from her face. 

The only person, the only friend she ever had in so many years had betrayed her, had left her cruelly. All because of her blasted family. How dare they! She hated, loved, and missed them all at once. They had robbed her life from her- they had left her.

**. . .**

He did not know when he had started running and what from, but he continued out of instinct. These forests were large, but not large enough to completely cease to exist, to be forgotten in. 

He was done for, he had to be. He could not go back and face the Order. They would know. He was nearly a murder, just nearly a terrorist, and that was enough. 

No, that was ridiculous. If he explained himself, if he held the other two padawans accountable, then his uncle would surely believe him. 

He remembered how they had looked at him—as if he were a monster. 

Ben spun around for a new route, frantic and out of breath. There was an opening to his left. But he ran there only to find a small clearing with an open, starry sky above it— damnit. He ran in the opposite direction now, towards a stream trickling by, but that too was vulnerable to that blasted star.

He tried again, this time keeping his path low as he followed the riverbank. 

He ran and ran, only to find a dead end: the river went off a cliff and turned into a waterfall, flowing into the wide sea nearly five hundred meters down. At the edge, Ben grabbed his knees out of pure fatigue and panted, not wanting to look up above to see _it_ there, because he knew it was. It was pointless, though. He couldn’t outrun, out-hide, out-anything that star. It was always there. 

So knowing nothing else to do, he reluctantly lifted his gaze to the sky and lo and behold, it was still there, bright as ever. There was definitely something there, enjoying the show.

The warmth returned to him, only this time not in the will to fight but to shout. His once pale and kind face turned bitter and spiteful again. He hated it, and whoever was there hated him too, he knew. 

As he continued his staredown with the thing, he could feel something coming from it. An energetic, spitfire presence that shook him to the core and fueled his loathing. It called and scream and begged all around him, echoes from some far off place. 

_Ma..ma!...Pa-pa!_

“No!” Ben grabbed his head, covering his ears to try and block the noise out but that didn’t do anything reduce the cries that throbbed in his head. 

This was too real, too ridiculously nostalgic, too heart-wrenching. He used the warmth to spread over it and cast it away, but his mind only burned more. “Stop!” he yelled, “Enough! What do you want?” 

Was this torture meant to drive him to insanity? A new form of harassment? If it was, then it had worked. Ben couldn’t return to the Order like nothing had happened. He could not continue down the road of the Jedi anymore, not normally if the Rodian ended up dying. He would be accused of murder.

His hand trembled as he reached for the saber underneath his belt. All his life it had been his lifeline to the Order, his biggest strength, the closest object he had that had signified his loyalties. He toyed with it in his hands, observing all the years which had bruised and dented its hilt and for a split second, the line of his mouth twitched into a smile.

He stared blankly at the star as he threw it into the night sky, not exactly hoping it would come back.

**. . .**

Rey was crying, hugging her knees and weeping into them as she sat pitifully on the sand. She hated that lucca, and wished she had never met that stupid old lady or that pesky thief of a droid. Whenever she built up the courage to peer up out of her sorrow, though, it was still there, making fun of her. She sniffled and squinted her eyes at it. There was suddenly a brief flicker of something thin and dark growing out of the corner of it. 

And it was coming her way!

From experience, Rey hurriedly arose and ran a few paces back, then stopped and waited, closing her eyes, more nervous than anxious. Less than half a minute later, she heard something land hard into the sand in front of her and opened her eyes and saw: a piece of metal?

She sniffled again and crept towards it. It wasn’t alive, she knew, but from what she could see it was unlike any piece of hardware she had encountered before. She finally brought herself to dig the object out of the sand and hold it in her hands. 

It was much heavier than it looked. It was a long, cylindrical hilt of some sort.It was made of metal, such as aluminum, and carved into an ornate design with a large hole burrowed down into one end, and in the top center of the hilt’s body was embedded a single red button. 

For that moment, Rey forgot her recent period of grieving and let her curiosity take over—she pressed the button.

“Ah!” she shrieked in terror after she dropped the hilt from which a long line of blue light burst from the end with the hole inside it and scrambled herself away from the confounded thing. 

I—it had to be a real lightsaber! The mean lucca had given her a lightsaber!

The glowing blade purred against the sandy ground where it lay, just begging her to wielded it again. Mustering up all the confidence she could, Rey gingerly approached the ancient weapon and, as if dealing with a priceless work of art, held the lightsaber tightly in both hands. She waved it back and forth a few times and it had a bright translucent wave of a tail wherever the blade swept. Rey giggled at the funny noises it made as it it did so. It was so amazing! Unkar would pay sixty, no, six _hundred_ portions for th—

Rey looked back up at the gifter of her treasure. Whoever was in the lucca must have been the kind of warrior the shrew had told her of. They must have been powerful then, to have a weapon such as this. But powerful or not, every warrior needed a weapon. 

As much as she wanted to keep the awesome discovery, or even eat, Rey knew what she had to do. After untying one of the silk straps which wrapped around her waist, she took her kyber crystal and securely wrapped it to the hilt of the saber with the strap. 

And with a deep breath, Rey pulled back her arm, then threw it away. It would be better off with a warrior, anyway.

**. . .**

It came back to him. He should have known it would. 

His lightsaber had uncannily landed at his feet with something _tied_ to it. Ben automatically knelt down and inspected his rejected weapon. There was some sort of dirt-stained cloth wrapped around the hilt and over a large bump from some object underneath. The warmth erupted in his mind and buzzed irritatingly, giving him a small headache. His stomach turned when he cautiously undid the bindings. Something about this just wasn’t right.

His hand spun over and over around the hilt as he slowly unwrapped it until something small dropped from it—a rock?

He picked it up. No, this was not a rock at all but...a kyber crystal. Possibilities and crazy notions of where the stone could have possibly come from ran quick and rampantly throughout mind but none seemed to make sense. A star in the sky had just given him a piece of kyber! His stomach was sick; he felt liked he would soon be too. 

The kyber had a large, deep crack penetrating through its center. Ben knew it would not make for a proper blade.

_Take it. Your destiny lies within that stone._

Without a shred of disobedience, Ben started levitating his saber in the air and, using the Force, disassembled its components. Then, whilst the parts still floated before him, pulled out his original kyber piece and in its place, put in the cracked one. Unrushed, he pieced the saber back together and let the enhanced product drop into his hands. 

_Ignite it._

He didn’t want to.

_Ignite it._

He said he didn’t want to.

_Do it now._

Ben ignited the blade and let the crackling blood flames sink their color into his skin. Violent visions and voices and faces and screams flooded into his head. He saw fire and bodies on the floor which he recognized and a face which made his heart skip a beat and the destruction of everything he and his uncle...what Luke had built.

“No! This is was never what we planned!” he yelled at nothing, tears flooding down his snow white cheeks. He would not do it, yet he still held onto his saber, “No. Blast it, no! It’s not true!” 

He was standing in the center of the galaxy, his body surrounding and absorbing all systems around him until only he was left in darkness.

The boy that was Ben, with furious eyes of burning brown, shouted to the star, to himself, to the future he could not deny any longer, “It’s not true!...I can’t!”

_You can. You will._

The red blade, though its heart was cracked, would still serve its purpose. 

**. . .**

The two most valuable objects she had ever acquired in her life were gone now, and whoever’s hands her kyber ended up in, Rey hoped they could put some use to it. And that was that.

It had been a long and cruel night. She had learned that no one could be trusted, especially droids, and at least in that way the night had been profitable. 

Quieter than she should be, Rey turned back and made her way towards the remains of her collection heap. It was impossible to regather all her salvage without the sheet that had held them together, but she could at least carry with her the most tradeable items. Once her little arms could manage no more, she decided to trek on to Niima to trade what little she had for a proper satchel. Then, after that, she would have to depend on pure luck, or in other words: starve. 

This was what she thought of as she took step after deep step up a dune, her brow furrowed so far in contemplation that she almost forgot what it was like to not have the comforting assurance of a machine rolling behind her. It was not until something large poked at the corner of her vision that she broke her train of thought and looked to see...a craft? 

It was indeed large—a darkened circular edge of a kind of machine or ship or something from what she could see, poking out from underneath the sands. How had she nearly missed it? 

With a hopeful heart, Rey turned back and ran up the dune from which she had descended to take a better look. And as if an omen or a dream or an apparition, the poking edge led to a leg, and that leg turned into the corroded body of an...AT-AT! While Rey’s jaw almost dropped to the ground, her salvage did, though. She had found an actual _AT-AT!_ It must have been uncovered by the winds at one point during the night and now it just laid there, hers for the taking!

Forgetting all of her past grievances, Rey ran (nearly tumbled) down the dune and to the foot of the walker, laughing as she did so. Up close, it was huge! The foot itself was almost as tall as she was. She circled the entire perimeter once, then twice for the fun of it, and found herself out of breath. Rey deduced that it could house up to five teedos, two hutts, and possibly, just maybe, one little girl. 

She knocked her fist against the metal. It shook with dust with each impact but was still intact and quite durable. She moved towards the large slope of sand covering the underbelly of the hull and started to dig, shoving the whole of both her arms into the sands and pushing it away. Eventually, the movement caused the rest to topple to the ground and partially reveal the metal of the belly. Rey dug out the majority of sand at the bottom as well, then gave the surface a weighty kick. As she expected, the metal plate gave way and dropped to the ground inside, exposing the interior and giving leeway to even more piles of sand to sink from the inside-out to her feet. She sighed, yet found herself smiling at the hours of work to come nevertheless. 

Before going inside, Rey turned around, facing the one lucca remaining in the warm dawn sky. It smiled at her, and she smiled at it and mouthed a silent “thank you,” before starting her new day.

**. . .**

“There will be a change of pace today, class,” the content voice of Luke told the circle. Nearly no one could sense a difference in his tone or his posture or the normalized expression of his face. 

Next to him stood a young man, Master and soon-to-be Grand Master Benjamin Solo. Everyone knew him. He seemed a bit different today, though. There was only the slightest hunch in his stance, and his fists hung, clenched at his sides. There was also something else that made the younglings shift and shuffle, and put the older students on edge—when his gaze shifted onto then, he was not _looking_. The brown orbs that were his eyes seemed to only see through the faces before him and onto something bigger and more important behind them. They moved slowly and shifted onto each of them one at a time until something else interrupted his gaze, that being Luke’s hand motioning towards him.

“Now, it has come to my attention that one of our students has grown careless with their lightsaber, so we will start our day with a skill every Jedi should have embedded first in their minds, especially when concerning combat—aiding lightsaber wounds. Master Ben has been generous with his time in demonstrating the procedure,” he turned to the young man, “If you would be so kind, Ben.”

Ben faintly nodded and made his way with deep purposeful strides to the center of the circle where one lone padawan stood, one of the sleeves of his tunic removed to reveal a harrowing red and blue burn blotched into his right shoulder and that was loosely bandaged. In his hands he held a small roll of raw silk gauze and a small square container of bacta. Anyone could tell that the boy was clearly trembling.

Once Ben had approached him, he sat down on the ground and Ben immediately knelt beside him facing the affected shoulder. He took the container from the boy, opened it, and began applying it roughly to the bruise. Meanwhile, Luke’s voice boomed, explaining to the students watching what Ben was doing and why. 

Under the volume of Grand Master Luke’s orating, the burnt padawan eyed Ben as he went about the procedure and whispered, “It won’t happen again. I swear by the Force.”

Taking his eyes away from what he was doing for only a brief moment, Ben Solo spoke calmly, yet with a terrifying knowingness to his swallowed voice, “I know.”

**. . .**

A black menace who stood before the wide array of outlining systems from behind the wide starboard windows looked like that of an ancient apparition, instilled with dark energies that came with cursed artifacts from a foreboding era. Or perhaps he was only so to the young lieutenant who timidly approached him from behind. It was silly to think that the slightest word could bring about his bloody downfall, yet he couldn’t help but but give away this fear in a shaky, timid voice that did its best to demand the attention of Kylo Ren.

“Sir...I beg your pardon, but we are approaching Jakku.”

He thought he saw the Commander flinch for a flicker of a moment, even shift his feet as if the statement had actually affected him somehow. But even if so, the Commander still stood in place, his attention never leaving the galaxy outside, especially for the lowly inside. Perhaps there was something about the lesser systems of the Outer Rim that fascinated, or maybe he had caught a rare sighting of a distant supernova, or a shooting star?

Never turning, a deadly robotic monotone acknowledged the young man, “Very well.” 

**. . .**

Rey should have been sleeping. Tomorrow would be busy, like every yesterday and the day before and today. Yet the young woman couldn’t put her mind to rest tonight. For some odd reason, her eyes would not seal shut when she wanted them to and her hammock lost its usual sense of comfort. She had tried the solid ground of her home, yet even the boldness of that idea made her toss and turn until she gave into the bustle of activity. 

She was now sitting busily against one of the feet of her biped home, scrubbing roughly at one of her finds from the day before with a dirtied rag, making herself do so over and over until she lost the willpower to stay awake. She sighed and paused for a moment, stretching her stiff back and shoulders and unconsciously gazing at the wide midnight sky above as she did so. Her head titled slightly at the sight of one particular star. She smiled at Kyber (she had nicknamed it that) as she remembered her younger years not so long ago, and a perky robot. 

Tonight, though, Kyber was especially bright, teasing brief and consistent flashes like that of a ship’s malfunctioning primary light. 

_Something must be happening tonight_ , a thought popped into her head, but that wasn’t likely. 

She focused back to what was more important and continued scrubbing.

 


End file.
